Not like the old days

I find myself in the odd position today – potentially at least – of having to do the ‘speech’ at my old boss’s leaving party. Normally, it should be her boss or someone from a little further up the line, but following all the restructuring, redundancies and early retirements courtesy of our political masters, there’s no one left who fits the bill.

That’s not strictly true, but our current Deputy Director, who collared me, yesterday, barely knows her and anyway ‘has a meeting to go to’. Charming; he could have made something out of the fact that he’d had to delve for career information and mentioned the fact that she had only worked for him briefly at the end of a long career. That’s what I thought he was going to do when he asked me to investigate via the few people left who worked with my boss in years gone by.

So it seems that I shall have to say something from those notes now, unless there is an unexpected appearance or two.

I don’t mind doing it as such. I’ll keep it short and not too embarrassing, chuck in a couple of jests and exaggerate for effect here and there and then job done.

But it still seems pretty indicative of the department we now have, that doesn’t engender any real sense of loyalty or commitment, or evince any sense of corporate gratitude.

It particularly galls me, because Ann is one of the nicest people I have ever worked for and I for one will be very sorry to see her go, though I wish her well in retirement in Bristol.